Eurodragster.com: Nostalgia Funny Car seems to be getting
very popular in the States, have you ever thought to yourself
you'd like to do a replica of the LA Hooker or something like
that? Or one of your cars?

John Force: The LA Hooker...when my uncles were on the tour,
I said to my uncles "Why did you sell the LA Hooker?"
and they said "Actually we picked her up on the way from
Fresno" and that's how they gave the name to their car.
And she went on tour and that's why it said "LA or bust"
with the girl with the big chest. And they sold a million
T-Shirts. Beaver said "We couldn't make no money racing,
we made it out of T-Shirts". And it was a big sell. But
they got back in the Bible Belt and got in a lot of trouble.
So I don't know if we could bring that car back. But Nostalgia
is huge and I will go that way. But if you see my Museum,
we've kept the collector cars from the early days. But not
from my early days, not the original Brute Force, Australian,
Wally Thor's School of Truck Masters, the Leo Stereos. I don't
have the Wendy's car. I couldn't afford to keep 'em. It wasn't
'til I started making money, twelve or thirteen years ago,
that I started keeping the cars. Now I have them all. Everything
that goes back twelve to thirteen years I have. I have all
the Castrol cars, the original Oldsmobile in 1990, they're
all in my museum. So - I don't know if you've ever been out
there, it's pretty nice - and we're building a restaurant
and stuff, and more museum across the street. I'm gonna build
a seventy five thousand square feet building with a restaurant.
'Cos our building now in LA is probably about fifty five thousand
and we've outgrown it. We put a third storey on it, and then
we built the shop in Indy. We've got cars loaded ready to
go to Indy, it's just a matter of the time.

And we're building the motor programme will come out of Indy.
We're building an all-Ford NHRA spec motor...I'd better be
careful...but next question - did I ever answer that one?

Did you see the popularity of the Blue Max car at Dallas?
By the Worshams? It made me want to cry. It was unbelievable,
you know?

Eurodragster.com: You've got to do something like that.

John Force: We will. It's just that we're seven days a week.
Monday mornings, when I get back into town from the airplane
I address my real estate part of the group, I have an entertainment
company that we do shows around the country, I wanted to make
some money just entertaining. I get twenty five thousand just
to go tell stories! The same shit I'm giving you here for
free! And they love to hear it, you know? I'm amazed they
pay it to hear the bullshit...

Roger Gorringe: It's wonderful, we never tire of it John...

John Force: ...I was on Virgin Airlines and I was up talking
to like five people entertaining them and a guy in the back
was thinking "I wish that asshole would sit down!".
But I was just talking up a storm. I was loving it.

Roger Gorringe: Do you think your current records will be
surpassed?

John Force: I think that I started...I'm 56, I started my
winning streak fourteen years ago so we're talking I was...forty,
forty two. Scelzi's talking about retiring. He's got three
championships, how's he gonna catch me if he retires? People
look at how long they wanna do it. I don't do it for the money,
I don't do it for the records, I do it because I love it.
I don't know anything else, do you know what I'm saying?

Roger Gorringe: How about your performance records, your
4.66...

John Force: Well, the problem
that happened was they took away the percentage of the nitromethane,
and I don't think that hurt us 'cos we ran quicker. And I
know we ran 67, 68 on the less percentage. I think the biggest
issue is the tyre, they tried to put restrictions on us, to
not run any faster until they can figure out a way Goodyear
can build a better tyre, and I think that slowed 'em down.
But when we went to Denver at Mile High, my Funny Car ran
three hundred in Denver at Mile High, before the dragsters.
And I credit that to Austin Coil and Bernie Fedderly, because
of the technology. Drag racing is about speed and ET, they
cannot take away what we do or you kill...it's like taking
away the nitromethane, it's like taking the beer out of the
stands or the hot dogs. Nobody'll go. It's what we do. And
it's what the sport's all about - getting a beer, getting
a hot dog, get in the stands with the kids, mom and dad watching
drag racing, smelling the nitromethane. If you take it away,
you kill us. They're putting restrictions in Formula One,
they're putting restrictions in NASCAR. They gotta do something
but that's what we're all about so we'll see.

Roger Gorringe: Your
plans for 2006, I guess it's to recapture the title?

John Force: We're in the
development to build an all-Ford motor, NHRA-spec motor. We've
been given the equipment by a company called Fadal, Fadal
Machinery Giddings and Lewis. It's a worldwide corporation
that will take us into the market. We've got a big machine
shop in LA. We build our own blowers, our own heads, clutches,
but now we're gonna build the block. Because we want an all-Ford
motor and yet we have to fit underneath the NHRA...this won't
be a Chrysler design, everything evolved from the Chrysler.
This will be a Ford-spec motor by our brain trust, it's an
exciting new time to grow because the financing's there, because
who can afford to go out and buy ten million dollars' worth
of equipment to build machinery? I went after a sponsorship
six years ago, I said I'll supply the money for the suppliers
to buy the manpower, and they'll work with us with technology,
and Fadal Giddings and Lewis will supplied the equipment,
that's two huge companies worldwide. And Ford's really into
it.

And wait 'til you see our new Mustang! It's an '05 and it's
gonna hit in a few weeks and it's completely different. It's
longer, we built a shorter Mustang believe it or not, our
tail end is real short with a wing that overhangs a foot and
a half, by the code. Well now we've gone back to the longer
body and shorter wing. We went to the wider car in front for
downforce, that's when we got into all the steering problems
years ago, couldn't make the car steer it was too wide, too
much downforce. And it bent all the steering apparatus. We
couldn't figure out what was wrong, the chassis builders didn't
know what was wrong. The downforce was so great that it would
bend the main steering rod to the front - when you steered
it, you couldn't turn the tyres because the downforce was
so great. We had to go to bigger steering rods made out of
titanium, special stuff.